The Malagasy Way

2014 • Directed by

Nantenaina Lova

Documentary

The Chinese make everything and the Malagasy fix everything. The people of Madagascar pride themselves on producing things out of nothing: tires transformed into shoes, oil lamps made out of light bulbs, wheelbarrows fashioned from scrap metal. You see ingenuity, not underdevelopment, in their practices. A return to a conservationist lifestyle that encourages recycling, fraternity and self-reliance is entirely of the moment and makes perfect sense in the midst of a global economic crisis. Will the world pay attention? Filmmaker Nantenaina Lova venerates the family business, the clever artisan, the resourceful craftsman and those who possess the ability to create using everyday objects. The Malagasy Way is a poetic, proverb-packed lesson in creativity and resistance that offers fresh logic on how to live. By cultivating lifes treasuressharing, ancestral knowledge, a good soul and the sweetness in bitternessthe Malagasy hope to teach the Western superpowers a thing or two.